CGI Sharks Don't Break Down

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

I thought I would start a thread for us to discuss the pros and cons of CGI.

The Title of this thread came from a recent pub debate about Jaws. It's a well known fact that Spielberg had all kinds of technical problems with the Eponymous Mechanical Fish. I would suggest that this situation forced Spielberg to use a bit of film-making nous to overcome these problems.

(E.g *Unnecessary Spoilers Warning for a 36 Year Old Movie* [spoiler]The way he used of a decapitated head to make the audience spill their popcorn. If he had had the luxury of CGI, that scene may have not have happened, as Spielberg could have chosen to wait for post-production to have a whole CGI shark shark suddenly lunge out instead. Would that be a better scene?[/spoiler] It worked in Jurassic Park, [spoiler]'Clever girl' (although he didn't deploy CGI for that scene either)[/spoiler].

Now I'm willing to admit that when the shark is revealed, it's not entirely visually convincing, but the way the scene is composed ([spoiler]Roy Schneider is casually dishing out chum>the Shark pokes his head up to for a nibble>Roy Schneinder shits the bed>Roy Schneider informs Robert Shaw that 'You're gonna need a bigger boat'[/spoiler], it draws you into the story. If he were to go back and paste a more convincing shark over the original, I think it would only serve to distract from the spot on performance.

All those points are entirely speculative of course, because computers have never been near the Original Cut. But that's kinda the point. Films don't need any CGI to be good, and a couple of recent examples that have emphasized their CGI (Green Lantern, Sucker Punch) have flopped.

Having said that, Pixar make amazing films using nothing but CGI, so what the hell do I know?

[SmallBlueThing]

The last time I said something- even a tiny affectionate gag- about CGI, I was called "truly ignorant" on Facebook, so I'm going to tread carefully here.

I still find Jaws absolutely convincing. I've never understood or agreed with the opinion that Bruce is in some way "rubbish". It may have been less than impressive "in the flesh", but the expert way in which Spielberg cuts around this renders the prop utterly, terrifyingly real. I watched it the other week with my six year old (it's his favourite film) and the end, where it's on the boat, jaw flapping SHOULD be laughable- but it's still absolutely fearsome.

Yes, it's a rudimentary puppet/ robot/ whatever, but its presence 'on set' lends it a weight that no amount of cgi will ever have.

The computer stuff is fun, and some of it is truly marvellous (and here I'm going to say the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and step back as I open up that can of worms) but time and again breathtaking cgi shots are completely buggered by the camera swooping around, or flying far back to get everything into shot, or performing impossible movements that immediately take you so far out of the illusion they may as well have not bothered and instead just shown you the production sketches. If they could produce brilliant stuff and then limit their virtual camera moves to what would be actually physically possible were the effect an actual, real, thing, I'd be more prepared to buy it.

Pixar's stuff is different- as they're cartoons, and there needn't be any sense of realism in a cartoon. But as soon as you add live actors and pretend they're interacting with the cgi, I say you have to obey the laws of physics when it comes to getting your shot.

The other thing that strikes me is that the many diverse cgi effetcs we see today, across many films and tv shows, are basically interchangeable, as all the effects houses are going for "photo realism". A giant Transformer attacking New York is going to look much like any other giant robot attacking any other city, just as Godzilla and King Kong could share the screen and Dr Who's recent spaceships and battles could easily have come from the Star Wars prequels. It's "the way it should look"- a homogenous plop of "what we reckon it would actually look like" informed by all the movies you could mention.

Ray Harryhausen's skeletons looked like they did, not because he was bothered with making "real skeletons come alive", but because he was an artist, giving his interpretation of the scene. Ditto Rob Bottin's work on The Thing- which, no matter how hard they try, the makers of the new one will completely fail to better.

SBT

[Richmond Clements]

The shark in Jaws works because, despite what the title of the movie tells you, it is not a movie about a big killer fish- it is a movie about three men on a boat together and the fish is merely there as a plot mcguffin. That is why what is (by todays standards it needs to be pointed out) an obvious robotic model, works- we are more concerned with the story than how realistic the monster is.
If the shark was redone in CGI then the movie would them become a film about a killer fish, and then all you would be looking at would be the special effects.

And for that reason, and many others, Jaws is possibly the greatest movie ever made.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

...and here I'm going to say the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and step back as I open up that can of worms...

Someone was going to bring that up eventually

Pixar's stuff is different- as they're cartoons, and there needn't be any sense of realism in a cartoon.

That's true, but I still think there's a debate on the use of CGI in cartoons. I'm thinking of the DCAU here. The original Timm/Dini Batman series featured exclusively hand-drawn animation, while later DCAU shows like Justice League Unlimited used a mixture of hand-drawn/CGI animation, particularly in scenes involving vehicles/space. Specifically, the animated Kirby Circle Crackles was replaced with CGI particle effects. More generally, I preferred the hand drawn Batmobile, the change of medium in later cartoon's jars for me.

Ray Harryhausen's skeletons looked like they did, not because he was bothered with making "real skeletons come alive", but because he was an artist, giving his interpretation of the scene.

SBT

There's a can of beans I'm glad you've opened. That man is the Godfather of special effects. His version of 'Clash of the Titans' is clearly visually superior to the remake.

I don't want this thread to be about bashing CGI though. I think there are examples of it working. The First Matrix Movie for example, those bullet time effects would have been impossible without CGI. For me that scene where Neo is dodging the bullets, is a really good example of how presenting a scene in an unconventional way, can work, and tell a story (the story of a man who can dodge bullets).

I would also say that the CGI mapping/filtering effects, that are a staple of Frank Miller Movies, can also work in a film's favour. Just not necessarily in Frank Miller's Movies' favour

[Michaelvk]

The way I see it, is that CGI is a tool, not an end-all be-all solution. My favorite movies of all times, that to me still hold up very well, are amongst others the original Star Wars movies and the first three Indiana Jones movies.. There were limits to what could be done convincingly as an effect, so there had to be ways to tell the story around some of those limitations. That's what it's really about. These days a lot of movies are form over substance, because it's expected by the punters.

Here in South Africa only until recently were the local VFX houses adamant on doing pure CGI for ads. Nobody saw the benefits of using traditional effects, because they were all so happy with their new shiny toy. It took Peter Jackson to remind everyone that using a miniature still works.. They just let the art almost completely die out. Currently there are only a few people here that actually do miniatures in the country. I'm one of them. CGI I feel is best used to compliment or enhance traditional effects, or when something is absolutely, positively unattainable otherwise. That's what mr Jackson worked out properly and made Weta a world class VFX house. Here's an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxf6OPoaXCA We did the landscape as a forced perspective miniature. The tractor and it's hill was a 1:16 scale model (bought the tractor, fabricated the trailer) shot at 100 frames a second. The cascading berries you can see in the trailer are shotgun pellets. Only in the close-up do you see CGI berries. The grass on that hill was electrostatically flocked 1cm-ish lengths of fibres. This was then a 'realistic' environment for the berries, done by Black ginger, who in a disturbing kamikaze kind of way hurl themselves in what can only be described as towards a hideous, slow, crushing death. I digress.. Basically everything that could be done in camera was done in camera because it works. There's something about CGI that just doesn't look alive, especially in short time frame projects like commercials.. It was hard to keep it out of the Postman Pat realm of visuals because we were limited by the scale of the tractor, and ultimately the studio space. Ideally you wouldn't want to go smaller than 1:6th scale.

One thing you learn though, is that in visual effects, cheating is okay..

By the way, if anyone here has seen Free Willy 4, I can confirm that making a water movie is a f#(king miserable experience.

This is a test we did for pitching ourselves to do the VFX in house for a movie The Boss is working on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpEoscPugBQ

behind the scenes of above:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsXGlceEQ24

[vzzbux]

That is some clean and spotless work Michaelvk.

The films I used to love (and still do) were the likes of Jason and the Argonouts et al. The atmosphere of the stop frame is lost in today's age of super CGI.





V

[Michaelvk]

Thanks V! (Can you tell someone with a budget, please?  )

The suspension of disbelief starts with the story and the characters therein. If that successfully draws a person in, you can do the visuals with shadow puppets.. As soon as you need to distract a person with something shiny, then I'll bet you a fiver the story is crap. Case in point: Transformers (I still have 'em on bluray though.. Fanboy..)

[Radbacker]

I'm a sucker for nice shiny CGI but its got to be used right, I think MichaelVk hit the nail on the head, Practical FX cleaned up and assisted by GC seems to work best and as he said WETA are a perfect example, theres a hell of a lot of practical miniture work in the LOTR movies but not much would've been convincing with out he CG to complememnt it, and this relates also to what SBT said about cameras moving in a realistic way, if you've got a practical model and a real camera you've still got to obey the laws of physics and move the camera realisticly. 

CU Radbacker

[SmallBlueThing]

Michaelvk said it all far more epoquently than I, but yes, that's what I meant to say. Use cgi as a tool for enhancing the practical effects by all means.

The problem I have with it is simply this: take the Carpenter Thing. Rubber beasties stretching and splitting and pumping fake blood- and I believe it because I know it's there, physically, and I know rubber behaves like that. It's presence on set makes it frightening. If it had been cgi, I wouldn't have believed it, because the morphs made would have been of the sort not practically acheivable with physical materials. if you merge the two, use one to enhance the other, I'm sold.

In Jurassic Park it was the practical dinosaurs that sold the cgi ones, for me. The giant mechanical tyrnannosaur head did wonders in convincing me that the cgi beast might be real. Ditto the raptors.

SBT

[Michaelvk]

Having something physically on set helps the meat puppet.. eh.. actor actually interact with it, selling the performance. They've got something to work with. How can you get emotional to a tennis ball on a stick?

[Mardroid]

Having something physically on set helps the meat puppet.. eh.. actor actually interact with it, selling the performance. They've got something to work with. How can you get emotional to a tennis ball on a stick?

Some actors do manage to pull it it off with good acting. I don't disagree though. If you can show the actor something right there then it should take them less of a stretch to get in the right mind set.

Of course the 'not there' thing isn't new. It's not as if the actors could see giant monsters when stop motion puppetry was used, either, what with the models being all of a couple of feet in height, or so, and put in later. (I'm of course talking about the stuff like the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts and King Kong, rather than the big animatronic T-Rex head which really IS a to-scale animatronic puppet.

As for me I don't have a problem with either affects. Even when affects aren't that good, I understand what they intend and go with it, (within reason)*. It doesn't usually take me out of the film like it seems to other people. (Maybe my ability to suspend disbelief is high. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.) 

I don't really buy all this 'it's CGI therefore it's bad' thing that many people come up with. (In general, I don't just mean in this site, and I'm not directing that comment at anyone here.) Some of it's good, some of it's bad. Just as it was with older affects. In fact I've seen physical affects that look dreadful too. Yet I've noticed people complain even when CGI looks good, like they feel the studios sold out somehow rather than just doing what they've always done, just using a different medium.

That's not to say I don't think they should do physical affects if they can pull it off and afford it.

Case in point, the Star Wars prequels. Those films have problems. Wooden acting. Bad dialogue.  Some story issues**. Affects... mostly brilliant. They overdid some things (CGI trooper, for example) and some of the dog-fight stuff may have been a bit busy but it largely looked good.

* I've noticed that many of the werewolf heads in Dog Soldiers look rather static. You can really tell it's a model. And physical models at that, there's very little CGI in Dog Soldiers. (The bit where [spoiler]the girl's eyes turn yellow[/spoiler] is about the only computer generated stuff, I believe.)  It's still a great film... but not all the affects really work. On the other hand there was one great animatornic wolf-head they used  that was brilliant. They could even make it snarl!

**Mostly pacing. I actually liked the story arc overall.

[WhizzBang]

I still find Jaws absolutely convincing. I've never understood or agreed with the opinion that Bruce is in some way "rubbish".

I have always thought people were unfair about the shark. When I went to see the sharks at the London aquarium it struck me how plastic and 'unreal' real sharks do actually look when you see them up close. 

[Michaelvk]

Plastic and unreal or not, this would have me out of the water as if I were attached to a massive bungee.. And where this pic was taken is about 40 minutes from where I live. Needless to say, swimming in the ocean is low on my list of things to do..

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Your sea is blue while the only sea of Britains coast's are an ugly grey. Amazing picture. Let's hope the shark was merely curious and not hungry.

[Tiplodocus]

"it is not a movie about a big killer fish- it is a movie about three men on a boat together and the fish is merely there as a plot mcguffin"

I have to disagree with this. Jaws is a movie about a killer shark and how it affects the community and the three men on the boat.  Are you seriously trying to suggest that if it had been anything other than a shark in the movie (say, a serial killer, or  a disease) , it would have been the global, iconic film it is today? I don't think so.

And the shark is definitely not a MacGuffin. It kills one of the main characters.  MacGuffins don't actually have any effect on the plot.

That aside, I'm in agreement. If a lesser director did Jaws and had access to CGI, it would be just another monster movie.  But I wouldn't be averse for a scene for scene tidy up of Jaws where the rubber shark is replaced with a slightly more realistic one. Every shot exactly the same, no new fotage of the shark, just a more realistic one. 

Like they did with the Star Trek DVDs. Just replaced the sometimes ropey effects shots with nice shiney up to date ones so that the planets looked like planets instead of painted ping pong balls.

Interesting that Weta are quoted a lot as masters of this - and I think everyone is right. The bits where LOTR falls down is where they bung in loads of daft CGI for a gag (e.g. Legolas taking down a Mumakil on his own) rather than for the sake of the story telling (the utterly gob smackingly Cave Troll in Moria or the ride of the rohirim).

Star Wars is dead.